"The events of the 1930s are generally known to people through historical literature and media accounts. However, when delving into the details, this topic has been very little studied, leading to several myths," says Peeter Kenkmann, a newly minted doctor of history from the University of Tartu.

First, there is the myth that the non-political Vaps Movement of War of Independence veterans was planning a coup in 1934, which justified Päts' seizure of power starting on March 12, 1934. Secondly, according to Kenkmann, there is a misconception that the veterans themselves were to blame for the coup because they drafted the constitutional proposal that gave the head of state, in modern terms the president, too much power.

In his recently defended dissertation, Kenkmann debunks these myths, using archival sources to answer the question of which laws the 1934 coup was based on. He also examines the legislative foundation of the undemocratic governance established as a result of the coup. Additionally, Kenkmann was interested in how diplomats residing in Estonia in the 1930s viewed the events and how these events were later described in exile.

Whose Constitution will win out?

According to Peeter Kenkmann, the 1934 coup in the Republic of Estonia had two main causes. "Firstly, the previous constitution adopted by the Constituent Assembly in 1920 was very parliament-centered," he points out. The constitution of that time lacked the institution of a president as head of state, and the Riigikogu dominated the Government of the Republic.

"Unlike today, the electoral threshold was 2 percent instead of 5 percent, and there were many parties in the Riigikogu. This made it difficult to reach an agreement on forming a coalition government," Kenkmann explains. Consequently, the lifespan of governments in the 1920s was relatively short, but governance still functioned.

Another factor was the global economic crisis that began in 1929 and reached Estonia in the early 1930s. "Estonia was quite severely affected, and many people lost their jobs. Social conditions were difficult," notes the new doctor. In the wake of the crisis, tensions between ruling parties increased, and the lifespan of governments shortened even further.

Meanwhile, the War of Independence veterans' league, known as the Vaps Movement, emerged as an extraparliamentary political force in the 1920s. Initially, they did not plan to engage in politics at all, but by the turn of the decade, they spoke of their desire to improve Estonia's political culture. According to Kenkmann, the veterans proposed a radical draft constitutional amendment to achieve this. "This meant a directly elected president with significant power and a reduction in the influence and number of parliament members," he specifies.

As governments began to fall more rapidly during the economic crisis, this, according to Kenkmann, proved to the veterans that the 1920 constitution was indeed unfit and needed to be changed. Although Estonian parties had already discussed the desire to amend the constitution with varying intensity in the 1920s, the topic only began to be addressed in depth when the veterans threatened to submit their draft.

"As a result, the Riigikogu finally prepared its own draft. In 1932, the first referendum was held, and the people narrowly rejected the draft," says Kenkmann. Before the War of Independence veterans could submit their draft, the Riigikogu resubmitted its own draft in a slightly modified form in 1933. This time, the people overwhelmingly rejected it. "In October 1933, a referendum on the veterans' draft was held, and the people overwhelmingly approved it," notes Kenkmann.

The constitution, amended according to the veterans' demands, halved the number of Riigikogu members and, among other things, gave the president the right to enact laws by decree. "Although formally these were constitutional amendments, it is often simply referred to as the 1933 constitution for simplicity," explains Kenkmann.

When the new constitution came into force in January 1934, elections were supposed to follow in April. "As we know, the elections never took place because on March 12, 1934, State Elder Konstantin Päts declared a nationwide state of emergency, now acting under this new constitution. He dissolved the parties and the Vaps Movement and indefinitely postponed the elections," Kenkmann describes.

Fears of foreign and domestic enemies stoked

According to Peeter Kenkmann, his dissertation focuses specifically on the events following March 12, 1934. As mentioned, several myths about that period persist to this day. Firstly, the claim that the Vaps Movement were planning a coup, which Konstantin Päts used to justify the imposition of the state of emergency, still lives on. "Neither contemporary police investigators nor later historians with access to archival documents have found any evidence to support this claim," Kenkmann debunks the myth.

Secondly, there is the notion that the veterans themselves handed over too much power to the state elder, thus setting themselves up for a fall. According to Kenkmann, this claim is also unfounded, as the creation of a powerful presidential position was included in all three constitutional drafts presented in the 1932 and 1933 referendums. "In essence, this was the will of a significant part of the Estonian political elite and the citizens, as evidenced by the referendum results," he explains.

"One of the main arguments of my dissertation is that the constitutional amendments proposed by the Vaps and approved in October 1933 had nothing to do with the coup," he states. The constitutional paragraphs used to carry out the coup had been in effect since 1920, and the state of emergency law had been in place since 1930.

On March 12, 1934, Konstantin Päts declared a nationwide state of emergency. This allowed the authorities to restrict citizens' freedom of speech, freedom of movement and political rights. "The state of emergency was not an extraordinary measure in the political and legal context of that time. It had been continuously in effect in the Republic of Estonia since the beginning of the War of Independence."

However, in previous years, it had only been in effect in certain regions of Estonia and targeted the activities of local communists. "I argue that until 1934, no one had used the state of emergency and these same laws to destroy the democratic order in Estonia as Päts did, although the formal legal basis for it had always existed," Kenkmann acknowledges.

The state of emergency established by the coup remained in effect in Estonia until the summer of 1940, when the Soviet Union occupied the country. "My second main argument is that the state of emergency during those years was not justified in any way," says the new doctor.

Päts justified the state of emergency partly by claiming that public order was disturbed. "It cannot be denied that in 1934, before the coup, there was a very aggressive election campaign in which the Vaps Movement disrupted the activities of other parties and vice versa, but this was just an election campaign. Even if we agree with this justification, we still have to ask: how long did this alleged state of public unrest last?" Kenkmann reflects.

Several years later, there was no longer any opposition in Estonia that posed a threat to the state, which would have necessitated the continued extension of the state of emergency. "Päts' desire to reorganize the foundations of the Estonian state again through the drafting of the 1937 constitution, during which he violated the existing constitutional amendment procedures, could not be a legitimate reason for the continued state of emergency and restriction of citizens' fundamental rights," Kenkmann assesses.

On the other hand, Päts claimed in 1938 and 1939 that extending the state of emergency was necessary to protect Estonia in the face of rising international tensions. "In my opinion, the state of emergency had little to no role in ensuring Estonia's external security. Did it manage to prevent the aggressive intentions of the Soviet Union or Germany against Estonia? Clearly, it did not," Kenkmann points out.

The West knew well enough

Peeter Kenkmann was also interested in how the events of the 1930s were perceived in exile and by foreign diplomats present in Estonia at the time. It was in exile that the current romanticized misconceptions took root.

"In exile, all recognized Estonian politicians like Konstantin Päts, General Laidoner, and opposition leader Jaan Tõnisson were viewed with equal respect as political figures and martyrs of independence, whose fate after falling into the hands of Soviet occupation forces remained unknown for a long time," Kenkmann notes. However, this respect did not extend to the opposition as a whole, leading to widespread approval of Päts' coup in exile.

The new doctor sees two reasons for this approval. "Firstly, no one denied the state of emergency and the lack of democracy, but it was claimed that it wasn't that bad," he says. With the adoption of the new constitution in 1937 and the subsequent parliamentary elections, it was argued that the situation was improving. "In exile, it was believed that democracy would have been restored if the Soviet Union had not occupied Estonia," Kenkmann adds. However, examining the actions of the Estonian leadership in the late 1930s, Kenkmann says he found no evidence of real preparations for restoring democracy.

Secondly, in exile, it was thought that the events of the second half of the 1930s should not be examined too objectively to avoid deviating from the consensus. A well-known historian of the older generation stated in a private letter that "good manners" prevented him from calling Estonia a dictatorship, although he agreed with that assessment.

"The struggle for freedom in exile was aimed at democratic Western countries, and it was better to portray Estonia as a democratic state before the Soviet occupation began rather than as a semi-dictatorship," explains Kenkmann. Those who tried to tell the truth in exile were accused of disregarding the interests of the struggle for freedom and handing trump cards to Soviet propaganda. Among them were several younger-generation social scientists educated in the West, such as Tõnu Parming and Rein Marandi, whose research is still highly regarded today, according to Kenkmann.

"From the perspectives of foreign diplomats, I believe that neither of the claims made in exile holds," the historian points out. Firstly, all the archives of Estonian state institutions remained in Estonia, and Soviet propaganda had ample material. As for the favor of Western countries, the nature of the coup in Estonia was no secret to anyone.

"Looking at the reports sent by diplomats in Estonia in 1934 to their capitals, they all understood the events in the same way. It didn't matter if they were diplomats from Nazi Germany, the communist Soviet Union or democratic Sweden, Finland and Latvia (which was still democratic for a few more months): they all clearly wrote that a dictatorship had been established in Estonia," Kenkmann states. Since the elections were postponed, the diplomats wrote that democratic elections would not be expected until Päts was sure of achieving a favorable result.

"Therefore, the abandonment of democracy in Estonia was certainly not a surprise to Western countries; they knew it. The real question is whether it made any difference," the new doctor reflects. In his view, the coup did not significantly affect Estonia's relations with other countries. "The countries I studied were not interested in particularly close alliances with Estonia. The reason was not the 1934 coup but simply that these countries' foreign policy priorities lay elsewhere," he says.

Finally, Kenkmann recalls a question asked during his dissertation defense: whether the Soviet Union's occupation of Estonia in 1940 had any connection with the events described in his work. He notes that an argument sometimes used in defense of Päts is that Estonia would have been occupied regardless. "My position is that if we start speculating whether this would not have happened to a democratic Estonia, the result would be terribly speculative. I think the answer is that it's impossible to provide a definitive answer or evidence," he says.

In Kenkmann's personal view, democracy has value in itself – regardless of what happened in 1939 and 1940. "I believe that the Estonian state and the Estonian people deserved democratically elected institutions even during those intervening years," he concludes.

Peeter Kenkmann defended his doctoral dissertation, "Development of the Authoritarian Regime in Estonia between 1934 and 1940: Roles of the Constitution and the State of Emergency," on June 19 at the University of Tartu. The dissertation was supervised by associate professors Ago Pajur and Jaak Valge from the University of Tartu. The opponent was Professor Andres Kasekamp from the University of Toronto.

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