The Soviet–Estonian non-aggression pact

On 4 May 1932 in Moscow the Soviet Union and Estonia signed a “Treaty of Non-Aggression and Peaceful Settlement of Disputes”. Both sides undertook not to attack each other, not to take part in agreements directed against the other party, and to settle disputes by conciliation. Estonia ratified the treaty on 29 July and the Soviet Union on 5 August, and it entered into force on 18 August 1932. It was to remain in force for three years, renewed automatically for a further two years unless either side denounced it six months before it expired. In April 1934 it was extended to 31 December 1945. It was the third in a series of agreements that the People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Maxim Litvinov, concluded in 1932 with the USSR’s western neighbours – after Finland (21 January) and Latvia (5 February), and before Poland (25 July) and France (29 November).

A small neighbour beyond the Narva

Estonia declared independence in February 1918 and defended it in the war against the Bolsheviks, fought in 1918–1920 alongside the Russian Civil War. On 2 February 1920 at Tartu Soviet Russia concluded with it the first peace treaty in its history with a state that had broken away from the former empire. In it Soviet Russia recognised Estonia’s independence and renounced “voluntarily and for ever” all rights to its territory. The Treaty of Tartu remained the foundation of relations between the two countries from then on.

Those relations, however, were far from calm. On 1 December 1924 several hundred Communists, inspired and armed from Moscow, tried to seize Tallinn. The uprising was crushed within a few hours, but it reinforced the conviction in Estonia that its Soviet neighbour, with more than 150 million inhabitants, had not come to terms with the existence of a state of little more than a million. Estonian security rested on the League of Nations, military cooperation with Latvia and good relations with Poland and Finland.

From the mid-1920s the Soviet Union had been offering its neighbours bilateral treaties of neutrality and non-aggression. The Baltic states, like Poland, preferred a joint agreement that would not allow Moscow to play them off one by one. In February 1929 Estonia signed the Litvinov Protocol, which brought the Kellogg–Briand Pact into force between the USSR and its western neighbours. The protocol, however, contained nothing beyond a general renunciation of war.

A new round of negotiations

The breakthrough came in 1931. On 10 August France and the USSR initialled the text of their own non-aggression pact, and Paris encouraged its allies, Poland and Romania, as well as the Baltic states, to follow suit. Moscow had its own reasons for securing its western border. The first Five-Year Plan and forced collectivisation were under way, and in September 1931 the Mukden incident opened the way to the Japanese invasion of Manchuria. By early 1932 the Kwantung Army stood on the Soviet border, and on 1 March the creation of Manchukuo was proclaimed in Manchuria. Peace in Europe became even more valuable to the Kremlin.

Talks with Finland and Estonia began in December 1931. According to Latvian studies, on 15 December the Estonians passed to the Latvians the draft of their treaty with the USSR, almost identical to the text being negotiated at the same time by Poland. The states of the region coordinated the wording among themselves so that none of them would accept worse terms than the others. Finland signed its pact on 21 January 1932, the Polish text was initialled in Moscow on 25 January, and Latvia signed its treaty in Riga on 5 February. The Estonian negotiations took longer. Estonia was going through a difficult period: the Great Depression had hit its agriculture and trade, governments changed every few months, and the far-right movement of veterans of the War of Independence, the so-called Vaps, was gaining strength. Estonia had been represented in Moscow since 1928 by its envoy Julius Seljamaa, a participant in the Tartu negotiations and later foreign minister.

What was agreed

The treaty signed in Moscow on 4 May 1932 belonged to the same family as the other pacts of that year. The parties confirmed that the Treaty of Tartu remained the basis of their relations and undertook to respect each other’s territorial integrity and borders. Each undertook not to commit aggression against the other, whether alone or jointly with other states, and even without a declaration of war. Both promised not to join alliances or agreements directed against the other party, including those aimed at its economic or financial boycott. Disputes that could not be settled through diplomatic channels were to go to a mixed conciliation commission, whose rules were laid down in a separate convention signed in Moscow on 16 June 1932.

An important clause, common to all the treaties of 1932, provided that if one party committed aggression against a third state, the other could denounce the treaty without notice. Estonia thus did not renounce its obligations to the League of Nations or its cooperation with its neighbours, but it closed off any possibility of joining an anti-Soviet coalition. For Moscow this was the main gain. Since the 1920s Soviet propaganda had portrayed the Baltic states as a potential springboard for the “imperialists” and for Polish federalist schemes.

The next steps

The treaty entered into force on 18 August 1932. A year later, on 3 July 1933 in London, Estonia signed – together with the USSR, Poland, Latvia, Romania, Turkey, Persia and Afghanistan – the Convention for the Definition of Aggression drafted by Litvinov. It listed what constituted aggression and stated that no political, military or economic considerations could justify it.

When Adolf Hitler’s Germany began to draw closer to Poland, in December 1933 Litvinov proposed to Warsaw a joint Polish–Soviet declaration guaranteeing the independence of the Baltic states, prepared without their participation. According to Latvian historians, the draft could have served as a pretext for interference in the internal affairs of those states. Poland did not take up the proposal, and Estonia and Latvia rejected it in mid-January 1934, unwilling to accept guarantees from a single great neighbour. Instead, on 20 March 1934 Moscow proposed extending the non-aggression treaties by ten years, and on 4 April in Moscow Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania signed protocols extending them to 31 December 1945.

A few weeks earlier, on 12 March 1934, Konstantin Päts, then serving as head of state and government (State Elder, riigivanem), and General Johan Laidoner carried out a coup in Estonia that forestalled a Vaps victory at the polls. The country entered a period of authoritarian rule known as the “Era of Silence”. Tallinn’s foreign policy, however, remained unchanged: neutrality, the League of Nations and understanding with Latvia and Lithuania, with which Estonia formed the Baltic Entente in September 1934.

Significance

The treaty of 4 May 1932 gave the small state what it needed most: a written undertaking from its great neighbour not to use force against it. It also lessened the threat of Soviet intervention on the pretext of “defending” Estonian Communists. Its value, however, depended entirely on Moscow’s goodwill, and that changed when Joseph Stalin decided that an agreement with Hitler would bring him more than a system of collective security.

On 23 August 1939 the secret protocol to the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact assigned Estonia to the Soviet sphere of influence. In September, after the interned Polish submarine ORP Orzeł escaped from Tallinn, Moscow accused Estonia of being unable to guard its own neutrality and demanded military bases. On 28 September 1939 the Estonian Foreign Minister Karl Selter and Vyacheslav Molotov signed a pact of mutual assistance in Moscow. Its preamble stated that the Treaty of Tartu and the non-aggression treaty of 4 May 1932 remained a “firm foundation” of mutual relations, while its third article gave the USSR bases on the islands of Saaremaa and Hiiumaa and at Paldiski. Soon there were more Red Army soldiers stationed in Estonia than the entire Estonian army.

In June 1940, while the world’s attention was fixed on the defeat of France, the Soviet Union demanded that Estonia admit more troops and change its government. On 17 June the Red Army entered the country, and on 6 August 1940 Estonia was incorporated into the USSR as the Estonian SSR. Konstantin Päts died in 1956 in a Soviet psychiatric hospital, and Johan Laidoner in 1953 in Vladimir prison. The treaty, meant to remain in force until the end of 1945, outlived on paper the state with which it had been concluded. Most Western democracies never recognised the annexation, and the occupation ended only in 1991.