Ethnic Relations: Estonians and Non-Estonians

In: Nationalities papers: the journal of nationalism and ethnicity, Volume 23, Issue 1, p. 43-59

Abstract

As is generally known, the contemporary demographic situation in Estonia is fundamentally different from that of the prewar period. The autochthonous minorities who lived in the prewar Estonian Republic—Germans, Jews, Swedes, Finns, but also native Russians (living in the northern and southern areas of the Peipsi lake)—were lost after World War II together with a change of Estonia's eastern border by Soviet authorities in 1945. This left Estonia a very homogeneous country where Estonians formed some 97% of the population and where the entire population was made up of Estonian-speakers.