Religion

RELIGION IN ESTONIA 1940 – 1991

The First Year of Soviet Occupation

The German Occupation

Development of the Relations between the Church and the State 1944 – 1954

After the re-occupation of Estonia by Soviet forces in 1944, the authorities started enforcing a new church policy. During the war, various changes had taken place in the Soviet Union’s official policy towards organized religion. The support of the church was essential for achieving victory (in the western part of the USSR the church was still quite active, it was hoped that the church could be used for carrying out the state’s imperialistic policies, and the Western Allies had stipulated that religious tolerance was a condition for receiving aid), so that in 1943, the Russian Orthodox church was given more freedom. Soon, other religious groups were also able to operate more freely.
Due to the changes that had taken place in religious policy, two new government agencies were established in Moscow for regulating the relations between the state and the church – The Council for Russian Orthodox Church Affairs and The Council for Religious Cults (both of them associated, at first, with the People’s Commissars’ Soviet, and then with the Ministers’ Soviet – the name was changed in 1946). In 1965, the two Councils were united to form the Council for Religious Affairs. It is quite clear that at first a distinct difference was made between the Russian Orthodox church and other denominations and religions. Both Councils had their representatives or trustees in all the Union Republics, provinces, and territories. These representatives worked with the local Ministers’ Soviet, but actually answered directly to Moscow. In the Estonian SSR, the first trustee for keeping an eye on the EELK and other non-Orthodox religious groups was Johannes Kivi, and the trustee for the Orthodox church, Nefed Karsakov. Both of them came to their new assignments from state security agencies. The trustees kept on an eye on the churches, monitoring the activities of the congregations, the church officials, and the clergy. The trustees had access to all the churches’ internal paperwork. No one could work for the church without the trustee’s approval. And in the post-War years, materials could not be obtained for church restorations without the trustee approving the project. But the trustees at times even helped and supported churches when the local Soviet authorities began to persecute them too enthusiastically – the archives show that there are clear examples of this in both Tartumaa and Pärnumaa.
A skeleton law, “Temporary directive concerning the activities of religious associations”, which dealt with the activities of churches and congregations, was ratified by the ESSR CC on 5 July 1945. It wasn’t until 1977 that this “temporary” directive was replaced by the more detailed “Basic regulations for religious assemblies”, which dealt primarily with restricting, even further, the activities of congregations. Estonia was the only Soviet republic where religion was regulated by a temporary directive. The religious trustees, with Kivi at their head, had drawn it up themselves, basing it upon the work instructions issued to them from Moscow. As we can see, local initiative was possible even in the formulating of Soviet religious policy.
The EELK was in a difficult situation. Many of the clergy (just like many church members) had, in the previous years, left Estonia – in the fall of 1944, about 70,000 Estonians escaped to Sweden and Germany, among them 72 clergymen, 12 candidate clergymen and theology students, and Bishop Johan Kõpp. In time, these Estonians abroad established an exile church uniting the congregations which had been formed in various countries. The Swedish deanery in Estonia, and its congregations, was disbanded, when the church members, along with their clergy, escaped to Sweden. During the war, 79 churches were damaged, and 24 completely destroyed (at the end of the 1930’s, there had been 195 Lutheran churches in Estonia).
Before escaping to the West, Bishop Kõpp had drawn up a succession list for the bishop’s position, which was to be used in dire situations. On the basis of this document, Assessor Anton Eilart became bishop after Kõpp’s departure. But he was not able to fill this position for long – on 25 November 1944, he was ordered to go to the MGB to be interrogated. Since he was allowed to go home for the night, he and his wife proceeded to go into hiding. In March 1948, he was finally caught by the Soviet authorities and imprisoned. When Eilart went into hiding, the leadership of the EELK was no longer determined by the succession order.
On 29 November 1944, the EELK’s Episcopalian Council convened in Tallinn and elected a temporary church council. Temporarily, this was to replace the EELK’s Consistory. On 17 January 1945, an expanded Episcopalian Council elected August Pähn to be acting bishop. They also elected a temporary Consistory. In its 5 July 1945 newsletter, the Consistory announced that all those clergymen who were no longer at their posts, were automatically relieved of their duties; about 80 clergymen had remained (at the end of the 1930’s, there had been 209 Lutheran pastors in Estonia). Already during the first Episcopalian Council meeting, the participants had to declare in writing that they were willing to collaborate with the government.
In May 1945, the authorities began to register congregations. The application for registration had to made by the congregation’s dvadtsatka (Russian term: a group of 20). This system was the same throughout the Soviet Union. The congregation’s Executive and Auditing Committees had to be elected from this group (all of them had to be full members of the congregation). This meant that the regular members of the congregation had little direct effect on the managing of the congregation. All the members of the dvadtsatka had to live in the same administrative area. This made things difficult for congregations whose members lived in more than one township. Also, a congregation could officially exist only if it had its own clergyman or preacher. That is why, from then on, it was possible to ordain EELK ministers who did not have a complete theological education, but were quite capable of serving a congregation. Also, women were given more rights. The first post-War Episcopalian Council had already given women the right to act as harbingers, and starting in the 1960’s, women could be ordained.
Already on 4 July 1945, the Episcopalian Council stated that there was a need for a Theological Institute, so as to relieve the shortage of properly educated clergy. At first, the Institute was a correspondence school which operated without the trustee’s approval, and dealt mostly with assisting theology students whose studies had been interrupted by the War. The Episcopalian Council’s decision of 1 February 1945, to ask the Consistory to establish a committee for examining theology students. is probably the first post-War official decision concerning higher theological education within the framework of the EELK. Throughout the Soviet era, the Theological Institute maintained the continuity of providing higher theological education.
In 1948, the EELK had 154 congregations, with 79 pastors (including acting pastors who lacked a full theological education) and 58 harbingers or church clerks.

Table 1. EELK church rites 1945 – 1947.¹

The church was popular among the general public, which meant that the authorities had to be careful in their dealings with the church. The number of confirmations in 1947 was a record for the whole occupation era. During the first few months of 1947, the trustee forbade (after consultations with Moscow), the confirming of anyone under the age of 16. In 1945, they had formed 35% of those confirmed.
In 1947, the Estonian SSR Ministry of Security, under pressure from Moscow, began to deal more actively with the Lutheran church in Estonia. The authorities in Moscow had become upset over the EELK Consistory’s protest over Estonia’s Minister of Education A. Raud’s speech in the fall of 1947, in which he had made derogatory comments about the Lutheran clergy. As a sign of protest, the Consistory had not sent out an obligatory message to all church members concerning the anniversary of the October Revolution. Instead, they sent a congratulatory letter to Stalin himself. The government planned to set up a systematic network among the clergy, thereby placing the church under direct governmental control. Those clergymen who became government agents were to be promoted to the highest ranks of the EELK. A report about the successful fulfilment of the first stage of the plan was sent to Moscow already in April 1948. Some clergymen had been arrested, some had been recruited as agents.
On 12 April 1949, Acting Bishop August Pähn was arrested and sent to Siberia. He had been recruited as an agent already in 1945, but he proved to be untrustworthy. Therefore, he had to sit in prison until 1956, when he was released as a result of Khrushchev’s amnesty. From 1944 till 1953, 23 Estonian Lutheran pastors were arrested. Jaan Kiivit, former EELK provost of Virumaa county, member of the EELK Consistory since 1946, Tallinn EELK provost since 1948, was appointed by the Consistory to be EELK acting bishop on 2 February 1949.
Members of the Consistory were replaced with people who were supposedly more loyal to the state policy than their predecessors. By the spring of 1949, thanks to the trustee, of the 7 member Consistory, 6 were government agents. Since the mass deportations of March 1949 had terrorized most people into submission, it was probably quite easy to recruit agents. Were the new agents actually more trustworthy than the earlier ones? According to official KGB reports – yes. But the agents’ personal files, along with their reports, have not been found – they have been taken to Russia, or have already been destroyed – so it is not easy to give an accurate answer to this question.

¹Since statistical records concerning other Estonian churches are not available, the Tables have been drawn up on the basis of only EELK records.

The special 13^th EELK Church Council elected, on 23 October 1949, former Acting Bishop Jaan Kiivit to be the new archbishop of the EELK. The new title was necessary for developing relations with churches abroad, and because the authorities required it. New church statutes (based on the statutes of the Latvian Lutheran church) were adopted, which regulated the church’s activities in accordance with Soviet laws. But the trustee of religious affairs was still not completely satisfied with the loyalty of the church’s new leadership, since, without informing him, the Consistory tried to make changes in the church statutes.
The same year, traditional confirmation group classes, instructed by the pastor, were banned. The clergy was informed about this decision with a Consistory’s circular dated 7 June 1949. The number of confirmations dropped in the following years. One reason for this was, of course, the fear that the mass deportations and forced collectivization had created.

Table 2. Number of confirmations in the EELK 1948 – 1951

The year 1949 can be regarded as a turning point in the mentality of the EELK. The church seems to have achieved a certain stable position in the Soviet state. Changes had also taken place within the church itself, which can be seen in the adoption of Soviet terminology (and doublethink).
In the following years, church statistical indicators stabilized. From then on, the church also participated in “patriotic” endeavors – special services were held on Soviet state holidays, and the Consistory sent out secret circulars to the clergy, instructing them to agitate their congregations to participate in elections. The local authorities wanted to make use of the church in such capacities, whereas the trustee thought that it was inadvisable to tie the church in with such community activities. The most important “patriotic” activity that the state organized for the church was “the fight for peace”.

In the fall of 1944, 22 priests of the EAÕK escaped to the West, where they established an exile Estonian Orthodox church. While back in their homeland, the Orthodox church was placed under the jurisdiction of the Moscow patriarchate. On 9 March 1945, the EAÕK’s Synod was dispersed. Church membership was decreased by the shifting of Estonia’s eastern border – over 15% of the membership of the Estonian Orthodox church suddenly became residents of the Russian SSR. A total of 20 Orthodox clergymen died in the repressions of 1940 – 1952. The church was headed by Metropolitan Grigori (1945), who took his instructions from Moscow; and by the bishops Pavel (1945 – 1946), Isidor (1947 – 1949), Roman (1950 – 1955), Ioann (1955 – 1960), and Aleksius (1961 – 1990). The Estonian Orthodox church abroad was at first led by the Bishop Aleksander (1944 – 1953). The ethnic Russian “old believers”, whose forefathers had left the Russian Orthodox church in the seventeenth century, were regarded as a “religious cult” by the Soviet authorities, but they were nevertheless allowed to function.
The Roman Catholic church’s apostolic administrator Werling was imprisoned in 1945 and sent to Siberia, where he remained until 1956. The church in Estonia was placed under the jurisdiction of the Riga diocese till 1992. Only two Catholic congregations remained in Estonia, one in Tallinn, the other in Tartu. For all practical purposes, the Catholic church in Estonia had once again become a church consisting of Poles and Lithuanians.
In 1945, the authorities in Moscow launched a program to unite all free congregations into a single nationwide organization. This took the form of the all-Union Coalition of Evangelical Christians and Baptists, which also encompassed the Pentecostals. Till 1950, this organization was allowed to function fairly independently, since the Soviets could make use of it in the sphere of international politics. But by the beginning of the 1950’s, the authorities were no longer interested in the Baptists getting substantial assistance from the West, especially the United States. Most of the aforementioned organization’s congregations in Tallinn were united into one congregation, housed in historic Oleviste church. The Council of Religious Affairs in Moscow found the activity of the Baptists and their desire to constantly recruit new converts to be threatening. The Methodists remained independent only in Estonia, since elsewhere in the USSR, most of the Methodist clergy emigrated, and the Methodist congregations united with other free congregations. Seventh Day Adventists were also allowed to function.
Extremist religious groups, like Pentecostals who wanted their own independent organization, had to endure persecution. Jehovah’s Witnesses were especially singled out, and in 1951, many of them were deported to Siberia in the course of a special action plan aimed at them. The Soviets’ hostility towards these groups was caused by their opposition to governmental power and control (refusal to serve in the military, etc).
Of the non-Christian religions, only the Jews were permitted to function. A synagogue was established for them on Kreutzwaldi Street, immediately after the War.
Actually, the years until 1951 can be regarded as a stabilization period for the development of the relations between the state and the churches. After that, no major changes took place.

Heyday 1955-1958

After Stalin’s death in 1953, the pressure on the churches was also reduced. Looking at the statistical records of the Lutheran church, it can even be said that this was the church’s heyday. When the deportees started to return from Siberia, after the 1955 amnesty, all indices concerning church activities went up. This is obviously a result of a “loosening of the reins”, a phenomenon which occurs again at the end of the 1980’s.
Table 3. EELK church rites 1955 – 1958.

In 1957, things reached a climax. Thereafter, the indices again dropped. One of the reasons was that the flow of deportees returning from Siberia was dwindling. Also, this marked the beginning of a new anti-church campaign.

During the mid 1950’s, the EELK began to develop intensive contacts with other churches abroad. In 1955, the bishop made his first trips to foreign lands – to Finland and Great Britain. The Soviets allowed the development of these contacts so as to be able to claim that there was freedom of religion in the USSR, and so as to be able to gather information about the activities of religious groups in the outside world. In 1957, the EELK was allowed to publish its year book, so that it could be said that churches in the Soviet Union may publish religious materials. But the reality was quite different – the next EELK year book was not published until 1982. From 1945 on, the only religious materials that could be published were thin church calendars and song sheets, and even these in insufficient quantities. All travelling abroad took place under the watchful eye of the KGB. Everyone who went abroad had to give a thorough report about their experiences. And people connected with the church were no exception.A new foreign policy was also accompanied by a new internal religious policy. But the effects of this new attitude could not be felt in the Estonian SSR religious sphere until a few years later.

The Period of Administrative Pressure and Aggressive Atheism 1959 – 1964

This period’s final year is actually debatable, since administrative pressure was used as weapon against religion for quite some time. Aggressive atheism is more directly connected with Khrushchev’s policies, and the effects of administrative pressure can clearly be seen in the second half of the 1960’s. Another reason why people were becoming less active in church activities was the noticeable rise in the standard of living during the 1960’s. Also, Khrushchev, and even Brezhnev, gave people more possibilities for self-expression and self-fulfilment. These possibilities were of course limited, but much greater than anything which the Soviet system had offered before. At the same time, people had by now lost hope that there would be any major changes in the overall political situation. Therefore, the people’s political ideology had to undergo some changes. Nationalist sentiments which were preserved, were no longer in any way connected with religion.
Aggressive atheism began its offensive in 1959, after Moscow had given its “ideological workers” the appropriate action guidelines. At one of its meetings, the Estonian Communist Party leadership found that the summer youth festival was an important step in this struggle. The first one had been held in1957, and the one in 1958 had had 2260 participants. The concept itself was not exactly new. Lev Trotsky had, already in 1923, talked about developing secular rituals for young people, and the German Democratic Republic had held its first summer youth festival in1954.
In the following years, a lot of stress was placed on the adoption of secular ceremonial rituals like weddings and funerals, so as to replace traditional religious ones. To make these new secular rituals more attractive, they were constantly made more festive and grandiose.
Atheistic literature was having its heyday. In 1963, 11 different atheistic publications were released in Estonia. Many prominent Estonian magazines began to feature the column “Science and Religion”. Many newspaper articles and commentaries criticized religion and churches.
Contacts with the church could have negative effects on one’s career. Churches had to pay higher property taxes and insurance premiums. All church employees had to pay a progressive income tax (about 33%, as opposed to 11% for an ordinary citizen). Clerics had had to pay these higher taxes from the beginning of the Soviet period.
In 1966, only 985 people were christened in the EELK, 447 people were confirmed, 434 couples were married, and 5,054 people were buried. This was the beginning of the “quiet period” in the Estonian church. The church, as an important cultural phenomenon, was disappearing from the lives of most Estonians.
At the same time, the Orthodox church was going through a very similar crisis, and the Roman Catholic church was totally dependent on the Poles and Lithuanians living in Estonia. But the free congregations were at this time actually expanding. They were winning converts from among those who had lost hope in the big churches, or those who could not find solace in atheism.

Tranquility 1965 – 1987

The statistical indicators concerning church rites and church membership in the EELK and other churches continue to drop. This is generally a period of stagnation in society as a whole, and also in the church. Especially at the beginning of the 1980’s, clerics participated in various anti-Soviet events; presented sermons condemned by the authorities; wrote monographs analyzing the relations between the church and the Soviet state/society, which they even managed to have published abroad (Harri Mõtsnik “Up against Atheism”, Vello Salum “The Church and Nationality”); organized youth camps (the Häädemeeste Christian youth summer camp, run by Villu Jürjo, probably being the best known). All this did not, of course, go unpunished. But only one Lutheran clergyman was actually imprisoned between the years 1955 – 1987 (this was Harri Mõtsnik, and even he was given an amnesty and released soon after sentencing, since he was willing to publicly repent). Religious activity was reason enough to be expelled from university – in 1979, Tartu University third year law student Illar Hallaste was sent down for having been confirmed and getting married in church. Nevertheless, the church played only a minor role in the resistance movement.
The leadership of the various churches remained loyal to the state. In 1968, the EELK Consistory even drew up a document justifying the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. Archbishops Alfred Tooming (1967 – 1977) and Edgar Hark (1978 – 1986) had both fought in the ranks of the Red Army, and had thereby won the trust of the Soviet authorities.
By the beginning of the 1980’s, the whole world was embracing right-wing values, and people were again beginning to value religion. Eventually, this wave of thinking also reached Estonia. In the eyes of the intelligentsia, the church was again becoming a significant part of society. Already during the 70’s, Eastern religions, which were popular in the West, and new religions which had developed from them, began to surreptitiously arrive in Estonia. There was a special interest in Buddhism. Some Estonian intellectuals found there way into the Roman Catholic church. Despite all this, the biggest transformations in Estonian religious life do not place until the period of radical political change.

The Awakening 1988 – 1991

This was a period of awakening in both the political and the religious sense. People were again coming to church. Clerics were participating in the political movement, and for some time, were even at the head of it. The Christian Democratic Party and the Estonian National Independence Party were the most popular among the clerics. Some of them even made it to parliament. Even though Kuno Pajula, the last EELK archbishop to be elected into office during the Soviet era (1987 – 1994), declared officially, that the church will remain politically neutral.
On 7 June 1990, the Baltic-German, Aleksi Ridiger, who since 1961 had been the bishop of Estonian Orthodoxy, was voted to be the patriarch of Moscow and all the Russias. The number of Orthodox congregations in Estonia had greatly decreased – in 1939 there had been 157, by 1992 there were only 80. Disputes break out between the Orthodox in Estonia and those who had been active in exile, about the question of the legal continuity of the church.
At the same time, new religious movements gain great popularity. Many people start to look favorably upon astrology, witchcraft, etc.

Table 4. Cross-section of the occupation years: participation in church rituals and the number of monetary donators in the EELK 1937 – 1991.

Selected Bibliography

^[1] 30ndate aastate lõpul oli Eestis 195 (luterliku kiriku kasutusel olevat) kirikuhoonet.
^[2] 30ndate aastate lõpus oli Eestis 209 luterlikku pastorit.
^[3] Kuna teiste kirikute puhul puudub kättesaadav uurimistöö statistika osas, on näitevahendina kasutatud EELK oma.