Valga is a town in southern Estonia and the capital of Valga County and Valga Parish. Until their separation in 1920, Valga and the town of Valka in northern Latvia were one town. They are now twin-towns. The area of Valga is 16.5 square kilometres and that of Valka is 14.2 km2 (5.5 sq mi). Their populations are respectively 12,261 and 6,164. On 21 December 2007 all border-crossing points were removed and roads and fences opened between the two countries with both countries joining the Schengen Agreement.
The Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic, also known as Soviet Latvia or Latvia, was a de facto republic of the Soviet Union.
Tapa is a town in Tapa Parish, Lääne-Viru County, Estonia. Located at the junction of the country's Tallinn–Narva (west–east) and Tallinn–Tartu–Valga (north–south) railway lines, it is an important centre of transit for freight as well as rail passengers. A home to soldiers since the 1930s, Tapa also plays an important role in training young men and women in the Estonian Defense Forces. The Valgejõgi River passes Tapa on its northeastern side.
Politics of Transnistria, a de facto independent state situated de jure within the Republic of Moldova in Eastern Europe, takes place in a framework of a semi-presidential republic, whereby the President of Transnistria is head of state and the Prime Minister of Transnistria is head of government. Executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative power is vested in both the government and parliament. Formally, Transnistria has a multi-party system and a unicameral parliament, called the Supreme Council. The president is elected by popular vote. The latest parliamentary elections were held in December 2010; however, they were not monitored by international organizations such as Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), which has expressed doubts about the level of democracy in the region, and were not recognized by other countries.
Printed media in the Soviet Union, i.e., newspapers, magazines and journals, were under strict control of the Communist Party and the Soviet state. The desire to disseminate propaganda is believed to have been the driving force behind the creation of the early Soviet newspapers. Until recently, newspapers were the essential means of communicating with the public, which meant that they were the most powerful way available to spread propaganda and capture the hearts of the populace. Additionally, within the Soviet Union the press evolved into the messenger for the orders from the Central Committee to the party officials and activists. Due to this important role, the Soviet papers were both prestigious in the society and an effective means to control the masses. However, manipulation initially was not the only purpose of the Soviet Press.
Postimees is an Estonian daily newspaper established on 5 June 1857, by Johann Voldemar Jannsen. In 1891, it became the first daily newspaper in Estonia. Its current editor-in-chief is Marti Aavik. The paper has approximately 250 employees.
The Holocaust in Estonia refers to the Nazi crimes during the occupation of Estonia by Nazi Germany. Prior to the war, there were approximately 4,300 Estonian Jews. After the 1940 Soviet occupation, about 10% of the Jewish population was deported to Siberia, along with other Estonians. About 75% of Estonian Jews, aware of the fate that awaited them from Nazi Germany, escaped to the Soviet Union; virtually all of those who remained were killed by Einsatzgruppe A and local collaborators before the end of 1941. Roma people of Estonia were also murdered and enslaved by the Nazi occupiers and their collaborators. The Nazis and their allies also killed around 6,000 ethnic Estonians and 1,000 ethnic Russians who were accused of being communist sympathizers or the relatives of communist sympathizers. In addition around 15,000 Soviet prisoners-of-war and Jews from other parts of Europe were killed in Estonia during the German occupation.
The Estonian Land Forces, unofficially referred to as the Estonian Army, is the name of the unified ground forces among the Estonian Defense Forces where it has an offensive military formation role. It is currently the largest Estonian military branch with the average size during peacetime of approximately 6,000 soldiers, conscripts, and officers.
Elections to the Supreme Soviet were held in the Estonian SSR on 18 March 1990, the first free parliamentary election in Estonia since 1932. A total of 105 deputies were elected, of which four were from military districts. Altogether 392 candidates ran for seats in the Soviet. The opposition pro-independence Popular Front won the plurality of the seats. The anti-independence "Joint Council of Work Collectives", representing mostly the Russian-speaking minority in Estonia, as well as the reformed communists, who favored independence but close relations with the USSR and were supported by Indrek Toome, who was running under the Free Estonia banner, both gained around 25 seats. During its first session, the new Supreme Soviet elected the former Communist Party member Arnold Rüütel as its chairman, allowing him to stay as the nominal leader of Estonia.
Sergey Sergeyevich Frantsev is a professional association football coach from Russia.
The Guerrilla war in the Baltic states was an armed struggle waged by the Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian partisans, called the Forest Brothers, against the Soviet Union during the Soviet invasion and occupation of the three Baltic states during and after World War II. Similar anti-Soviet Central and Eastern European resistance groups fought against Soviet and communist rule in Bulgaria, Poland, Romania, and western Ukraine.
Pravda is a Russian broadsheet newspaper, formerly the official newspaper of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, when it was one of the most influential papers in the country with a circulation of 11 million. The newspaper began publication on 5 May 1912 in the Russian Empire, but was already extant abroad in January 1911. It emerged as a leading newspaper of the Soviet Union after the October Revolution. The newspaper was an organ of the Central Committee of the CPSU between 1912 and 1991.
Parliamentary elections were held in Estonia on 14 and 15 July 1940 alongside simultaneous elections in Latvia and Lithuania. The elections followed the Soviet occupation of the three countries. As was the case in Latvia and Lithuania, the elections in Estonia were blatantly rigged. They were also unconstitutional, since only seats for the lower chamber of the Riigikogu, the Chamber of Deputies, were contested; the upper chamber, the National Council, was never reconvened. According to August Rei, one of independent Estonia's last envoys to Moscow, under the Estonian constitution, the Chamber of Deputies had "no legislative power" apart from the National Council.
The dissolution of the Soviet Union (1988–1991) was the process of internal political, economic and ethnic disintegration within the USSR as an unintended result of General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev's effort of reform of the Soviet political and economic system in an attempt to end the Era of Stagnation, which resulted in the end of its existence as a sovereign state. In late 1991, the leaders of three of the Union's founding and largest republics declared that the Soviet Union no longer existed, and 11 more republics joined them shortly thereafter. Gorbachev had to resign his office as president and what was left of the parliament to formally acknowledge the Union's collapse as a fait accompli.
Edasi was a newspaper published in Tartu, Estonia. The paper was published with this name between 1948 and 1994.
AS Postimees Grupp, formerly known as AS Postimees and AS Eesti Meedia, is an Estonian media holding company headquartered in Tallinn. The company is currently owned by MM Group, having acquired the half of the company from Norwegian company Schibsted in 2013 and bought the remaining half in 2015. The group is one of the largest media group in the Baltics. Among the Group's activities are creation of print and online media, production of television and radio, e-commerce.
This article lists events that occurred during 1950 in Estonia.
Lehte Hainsalu is an Estonian writer, poet and politician.
Ajan Suunta was the newspaper of the Finnish Patriotic People's Movement (IKL) that ran from 1932 to 1944. IKL published thirty newspapers and magazines, but the daily newspaper Ajan Suunta was the main organ of the party. Ajan Suunta was preceded by the newspaper Ajan Sana published from 1930 to 1932.
Karl Treufeldt was an Estonian revolutionary and proletarian publicist. He was a revolutionary organizer during the Commune of the Working People of Estonia 1918-1919, leading the Red Guards in Haapsalu. After the defeat of the Commune, he was active in Estonian-language publishing activities in Soviet Russia.
