Twenty-seven years ago, on November 6, 1988, the Estonian National Independence Party (ERSP) directed an appeal to the United Nations General Assembly asking that the body send U.N. observers to Estonia as soon as possible. The appeal was an appendix to its September 17 “Memorandum to the United Nations General Assembly Concerning the Situation in Estonia.”
The ERSP (among the first opposition parties to the Communist Party in the USSR) also asked for the implementation of other measures including the use of U.N. peacekeeping forces, which would prevent “the use of force and repressions by Soviet occupation troops and the Moscow-inspired ‘fifth column’ and restore to Estonia and the Estonian people the right to determine their own fate,” as reported by the New York-based Estonian American National Council.
An escalation of tension arose after changes to the Soviet Constitution that would increase centralization, and were viewed as the “deathknell for all Estonian aspirations for greater autonomy.” The ERSP claimed that the “undemocratic, heavy-handed measures being used to force through the constitutional changes completely ignoring the wishes of the small nationalities, are a threat to world peace and security …similar to piling up explosive material without any regard to the danger of explosion.”
“While the Estonian people have clearly and unanimously shown their willingness to solve their own problems in a peaceful and democratic spirit and tradition,” the ERSP expresses grave concern about potential repressions resulting from the Soviet law permitting the stationing of special paramilitary unites in Estonia as well as from possible provocations carried out by a “fifth column” of so-called internationalists who want to derail the process of democratization and to provide a pretext for a crackdown.
The ERSP manifesto stated: “…Our demand for independence is not extremism, rather it is the most realistic, sober and illusion-free way out of our concerns and miseries. The future relations of independent Estonia with her eastern neighbor can only be based on the February 2, 1920, Peace Treaty of Tartu. This treaty has lost none of its legal or essential value. Treaties like this do not lose their validity through forcible occupations.”
Following the Hitler-Stalin Pact of 1939, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were incorporated into the Soviet Union, in a clear violation of international law. Most Western nations did not recognize as legal or permanent the forcible seizure of the Baltic states by the Soviets.
A petition was drafted by the ERSP on November 2, 1988, and sent to the Estonian Supreme Soviet that the Estonian SSR be declared an independent nation, separate from the Soviet Union.
Source: “Estonians request U.N. peace-keeping force,” The Ukrainian Weekly, November 13, 1988.