Communist Party of Estonia
에스토니아 공산당
The communist party formed on 5 November 1920 when the Estonian organisations of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) were set up as a separate party. Banned in the independent Republic of Estonia until 1940, it worked underground under the direction of the Comintern; after the Soviet annexation of 1940 it was merged into the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and became its ruling organisation in the Estonian SSR. In 1990 it split between a pro-sovereignty majority and a pro-Soviet remainder.
In depth
Its predecessor was the Northern Baltic Committee of the RSDLP(b), created in June 1914. After the February Revolution the Estonian Bolsheviks won a majority on the Tallinn city council in the summer of 1917 and took 40.2 per cent of the Estonian vote in the Constituent Assembly election. Their rule ended with the German invasion at the end of February 1918 and the party went into exile in Soviet Russia; after an independent Estonian government took office in November 1918 it supported the Red Army's invasion and set up the Estonian Workers' Commune in the occupied areas. Viktor Kingissepp returned to Estonia in November 1918 to organise the banned party and presided over its first congress in Tallinn in November 1920, which joined the Comintern as one of its sections.
The Republic of Estonia banned the party from 1920 to 1940. It had significant support among industrial workers, students and teachers and a strong position in the trade unions, and its front organisations always won more than 5 per cent in parliamentary elections. After the failed coup attempt of 1 December 1924, however, it lost support rapidly and its membership fell to around 70–200; by its own records only 150 members remained at the Soviet annexation in June 1940. In the rigged election of 1940 its candidates stood on the list of the Estonian Working People's Union.
On 8 October 1940 the party was merged into the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) as the Communist Party of Estonia (Bolsheviks), dropping the "(b)" when the parent party was renamed in 1952. In 1950 many of its original native leaders were purged and replaced by Estonians who had grown up in Russia, and Johannes Käbin served as first secretary from 1950 to 1978. In 1990 the pro-sovereignty majority separated from the CPSU and became the Estonian Democratic Labour Party, while the pro-Soviet faction reconstituted itself as the Communist Party of Estonia (CPSU platform).