The Russian Revolution of 1905, also known as the First Russian Revolution, began on 22 January 1905. A wave of mass political and social unrest then began to spread across the vast areas of the Russian Empire. The unrest was directed primarily against the Tsar, the nobility, and the ruling class. It included worker strikes, peasant unrest, and military mutinies. In response to the public pressure, Tsar Nicholas II was forced to go back on his earlier authoritarian stance and enact some reform. This took the form of establishing the State Duma, the multi-party system, and the Russian Constitution of 1906. Despite popular participation in the Duma, the parliament was unable to issue laws of its own, and frequently came into conflict with Nicholas. The Duma's power was limited and Nicholas continued to hold the ruling authority. Furthermore, he could dissolve the Duma, which he did three times in order to get rid of the opposition.
The Decembrist Revolt was a failed coup d'état led by liberal military and political dissidents against the Russian Empire. It took place in Saint Petersburg on 26 December [O.S. 14 December] 1825, following the sudden death of Emperor Alexander I.
Harju County, is one of the fifteen counties of Estonia. It is situated in northern Estonia, on the southern coast of the Gulf of Finland, and borders Lääne-Viru County to the east, Järva County to the southeast, Rapla County to the south, and Lääne County to the southwest. The capital and largest city of Estonia, Tallinn, is situated in Harju County. Harju is the largest county in Estonia in terms of population, as almost half (45%) of Estonia's population lives in Harju County.
The history of the Jews in the Soviet Union is inextricably linked to much earlier expansionist policies of the Russian Empire conquering and ruling the eastern half of the European continent already before the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. "For two centuries – wrote Zvi Gitelman – millions of Jews had lived under one entity, the Russian Empire and [its successor state] the USSR. They had now come under the jurisdiction of fifteen states, some of which had never existed and others that had passed out of existence in 1939." Before the revolutions of 1989 which resulted in the end of communist rule in Central and Eastern Europe, a number of these now sovereign countries constituted the component republics of the Soviet Union.
The emancipation reform of 1861 in Russia, also known as the Edict of Emancipation of Russia, was the first and most important of the liberal reforms enacted during the reign of Emperor Alexander II of Russia. The reform effectively abolished serfdom throughout the Russian Empire.
The Alexander Nevsky Cathedral of Tallinn is an Eastern Orthodox cathedral in central Tallinn, Estonia. It was built in 1894–1900, when the country was part of the former Russian Empire. The cathedral is the city's largest cupola church. The late Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow (1929–2008) started his priestly ministry in the cathedral. It is the primary cathedral of the semi-autonomous Estonian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate.
The Bezdna peasant revolt, also known as the Bezdna unrest was an uprising organised by former serfs after the 1861 Russian Emancipation Reform. The event took place in the Spassky Uyezd of Kazan Governorate, specifically in a village of Bezdna. The leader of the unrest was a literate peasant Anton Petrov. He began convincing his neighbours that the local officials were misinterpreting new reforms brought about by the 1861 Russian Emancipation Reform. The insurgents believed that the tsar had granted them total freedom and declared that they would refuse to continue to pay payments to their landlords and suspend all works on their lots. Thousands of peasants joined the unrest. The unrest was put down by Major General Count Apraksin and a group of military troops who opened fire on the peasants. Between one hundred and three hundred peasants were either wounded or killed.
The Baltic German nobility was a privileged social class in the territories of modern-day Estonia and Latvia. It existed continuously from the Northern Crusades and the medieval foundation of Terra Mariana.
The Bronze Soldier is the informal name of a controversial Soviet World War II war memorial in Tallinn, Estonia, built at the site of several war graves, which were relocated to the nearby Tallinn Military Cemetery in 2007. It was originally named "Monument to the Liberators of Tallinn", was later titled to its current official name "Monument to the Fallen in the Second World War", and is sometimes called Alyosha, or Tõnismäe monument after its old location. The memorial was unveiled on 22 September 1947, three years after the Red Army reached Tallinn on 22 September 1944 during World War II.
The 1924 Estonian coup d'état attempt was a failed coup attempt in Estonia on 1 December 1924, conducted by the Comintern, and staged by the Communist Party of Estonia and Bolsheviks who in most part had been infiltrated from the Soviet Union. Of the 279 actively participating pro-communist rebels, 125 were killed in action, later more than 500 people were arrested. The Estonian government forces lost 26 men.
The country of Georgia became part of the Russian Empire in the 19th century. Throughout the early modern period, the Muslim Ottoman and Persian empires had fought over various fragmented Georgian kingdoms and principalities; by the 18th century, Russia emerged as the new imperial power in the region. Since Russia was an Orthodox Christian state like Georgia, the Georgians increasingly sought Russian help. In 1783, Heraclius II of the eastern Georgian kingdom of Kartli-Kakheti forged an alliance with the Russian Empire, whereby the kingdom became a Russian protectorate and abjured any dependence on its suzerain Persia. The Russo-Georgian alliance, however, backfired as Russia was unwilling to fulfill the terms of the treaty, proceeding to annex the troubled kingdom in 1801, and reducing it to the status of a Russian region. In 1810, the western Georgian kingdom of Imereti was annexed as well. Russian rule over Georgia was eventually acknowledged in various peace treaties with Persia and the Ottomans, and the remaining Georgian territories were absorbed by the Russian Empire in a piecemeal fashion in the course of the 19th century.
The Tallinn offensive was a strategic offensive by the Red Army's 2nd Shock and 8th armies and the Baltic Fleet against the German Army Detachment Narwa and Estonian units in mainland Estonia on the Eastern Front of World War II on 17–26 September 1944. Its German counterpart was the abandonment of the Estonian territory in a retreat codenamed Operation Aster.
Eduard Vilde was an Estonian writer, a pioneer of critical realism in Estonian literature, and a diplomat. He was the author of classics such as The War in Mahtra and The Milkman from Mäeküla. He was one of the most revered figures in Estonian literature and is generally credited as being the country's first professional writer.
The Russian Empire was a vast empire that spanned most of northern Eurasia from its proclamation in November 1721 until the proclamation of the Russian Republic in September 1917. At its height in the late 19th century, it covered about 22,800,000 km2 (8,800,000 sq mi), roughly one-sixth of the world's landmass, making it the third-largest empire in history, behind only the British and Mongol empires. It also colonized North America between 1799 and 1867. The empire's 1897 census, the only one it conducted, found a population of 125.6 million with considerable ethnic, linguistic, religious, and socioeconomic diversity.
Estonia under Swedish rule (1561–1710) signifies the period of time when large parts of the country, and after 1645, entire present-day Estonia, were under Swedish rule. In the wake of the breakup of the State of the Teutonic Order, the Baltic German local nobility in the areas of Harrien (Harjumaa) and Wierland (Virumaa), as well as the city of Reval (Tallinn) in June 1561 asked for and were granted protection by the Swedish king Eric XIV, leading to Swedish involvement in the Livonian War. At the conclusion of hostilities in 1583, Sweden was in control of the northern parts of modern Estonia and Dagö ; the Duchy of Estonia was created from this territory. Following renewed wars between Poland and Sweden, the southern parts of present-day Estonia were incorporated into Sweden by the Treaty of Altmark in 1629. Sweden also conquered the island of Ösel (Saaremaa) from Denmark, and were thus in control of all of present-day Estonia.
The Central Asian revolt of 1916, also known as the Semirechye Revolt and as Urkun in Kyrgyzstan, was an anti-Russian uprising by the indigenous inhabitants of Russian Turkestan sparked by the conscription of Muslims into the Russian military for service on the Eastern Front during World War I. The rampant corruption of the Russian colonial regime and Tsarist colonialism with regards to its economic, political, religious, and national dimensions are all seen as contributing causes.
Mahtra sõda is a 1902 novel by Eduard Vilde. It is the first part of a trilogy of historical novels about the peasant movements of the 1900s. The second work of the trilogy is Kui Anija mehed Tallinnas käisid, and the third part is Prohvet Maltsvet.
The Mahtra Peasant Museum is located in Rapla Parish in Rapla County, Estonia. It is a national institution of the Estonian Ministry of Culture and a national museum.
Alo Hoidre was an Estonian painter, book illustrator, and printmaker.
