Suchergebnisse

Estonia's Communist movement has received little attention in the West. The chief exceptions are its role in an abortive putsch in 1924 and the Soviet occupation and annexation of Estonia in 1940. Existing Western sources — primarily general histories or surveys — that deal with the interwar period of 1918 to 1940 tend to dismiss the Estonian Communist Party as electorally insignificant and to view it as a mere branch of the Party in the neighboring Soviet Union. In contrast, Soviet sources see it mainly as a native movement of significant popularity, the activity of which was suppressed by a bourgeois nationalist regime. Since the Estonian Communist Party participated in all parliamentary and local elections through fronts, a more accurate interpretation of its popular appeal may be gained through an examination of national election statistics. Detailed results of parliamentary elections are available and have remained an untapped source of primary data.

Aus westeuropäischer Sicht

The present brief commentary is focused primarily on a topic which at first appearance might seem tangential, but which nevertheless is of central importance to a sociological study of dissent among the non-Russian people of the Soviet Union, who together make up approximately one-half of that country's total population. Ongoing sociological study of any phenomenon ideally is characterized by a data-theory cycle, where a conceptual or theoretical model or framework helps guide empirical research, and where the social reality manifest in observations or the data collected continually tests and refines the guiding model or framework. The ideal is, of course, rarely attained, a matter most noticeable and pronounced in the study of "Soviet minorities."