Baltic Studies | The Baltic-Scandinavian-American Axis: Estonian Refugees of the 1905 Russian Revolution in the West

This event is presented by the Baltic Studies Program of the MacMillan Center at Yale.

Apart from a few earlier examples, the first time Estonian political emigrants made their way over to Western Europe and the United States was in the aftermath of the failed 1905 Russian revolution. Many of the refugees travelled initially through Finland to Sweden, where they could rely on assistance from socialist organisations. Subsequently, they could either stay where they were, return home when the danger passed, or continue to other known émigré hubs elsewhere. In many cases, their destination was the USA, where a number of them remained politically active.

In 1917 and the following years, movement took place in the opposite direction, bringing the frequently radicalised former refugees back to Estonia, where some of them joined the ranks of the Bolsheviks fighting against Estonian independence.

In the talk, I will consider the collective experience of this first generation of Estonian political refugees, take a closer look at some of their colourful life stories, and discuss the ways in which a better understanding of transnational political activism can enrich our understanding of Eastern and Northern European history in general.

Mart Kuldkepp is Professor of Estonian and Nordic History at University College London (UCL). He completed his PhD dissertation at University of Tartu, Estonia, in 2014, and joined UCL in 2015. More recently, he has also held the Estonian Diaspora Visiting Professorship at University of Tartu. Mart specialises on Scandinavian and Baltic history and politics (especially foreign and security policy, and early 20th century wars), but also has an interest in the Baltic Sea Region more broadly, including Germany and Russia. His recent book, Nordic Estonia (2024, in Estonian) explores the role that Estonia’s Nordic identity played for Estonia’s independence before World War II. His next book is The Shortest History of Scandinavia (2025, in English). At Yale, he will be teaching a postgraduate course about the independence of the Baltic states.