Good Russian article on Estonian Fascism

I got into a heated discussion with one of my FB friends (of Estonian heritage) concerning the complicity of the Baltics and Ukraine in Nazi war crimes in the former Soviet republics and found this very informative article about the fascist /nationalist movement in Estonia from a Russian site (translated into English):

http://www.mid.ru/bdomp/ns-dgpch.nsf/05 ... enDocument

Dude they're not gonna believe the stories out the mouth of the Kremlin

Even I don't buy everything in this piece - and I agree the fascists in the Baltics were murderous swine. We need better sources basically

Well then,"dude", you may wish to look at the conclusions of the Estonian International Commission for the Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity:

http://www.mnemosyne.ee/hc.ee/pdf/concl ... 1-1944.pdf

Of course, they avoid discussion of any pre-war, homegrown Fascist movements .

Emanuele wrote:

Well then,"dude", you may wish to look at the conclusions of the Estonian International Commission for the Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity:

http://www.mnemosyne.ee/hc.ee/pdf/concl ... 1-1944.pdf

Of course, they avoid discussion of any pre-war, homegrown Fascist movements .

Don't get pissy. I'm agreeing with you that much of this is true. Some, however, is going to be pure fabrication.

I don't trust Putin more than I trust Estonian fascists; though I did think it was awesome when he got hackers to DDoS them for taking down the Iron Soldier.

Just saying it needs better sources, that's all man

What parts do you consider pure fabrication?

Kirov wrote:

What parts do you consider pure fabrication?

They are implying every singe organization was made up of ethnic Estonians.

I somewhat doubt that. Even in ultra-collaborationist populaces the Germans had a nasty habit of sticking their own fingers into the dirty work. Exceptions being Axis minors like Romania who weren't under direct occupation.

Also the lack of citations is a bad thing. They could do with some. The documents they reference in the middle are just stock numbers of information which might only list Estonian units on an order of battle rather than directly participating in an action.

Not that they didn't, of course, just I don't trust the historiographical abilities of the Russian Foreign Ministry more than I do the State Department.

^^Yes, I'm interested as well. The article quotes sources , or are we to assume that because some are Russian sources they are automatically non-credible ?

They are implying every singe organization was made up of ethnic Estonians.

.[/quote]

Not from what I read. They identify the units that came under direct German control and those of Estonian militia and police. Many of the SS units were made up of strictly local ethnicities but ,obviously, directed by German command.

From what I understand, there have been dishonest citations of Soviet archives done by Western historians, so I wouldn't put it past the Foreign Ministry to misuse it either, but this document isn't really publicized enough for people to have challenged it. The problem with having a lack of other sources is that contemporary Soviet sources were not reliable either, their primary goal being propaganda, it's not like you can just say 1943 Fascist Collaborators of Estonian SSR Strike Again. Pravda. 45(9024):2. All-Union Communist Party (bolshevik) Central Committee.

And I don't know how much information on this remains in the German and Estonian archives, as they are probably off-limits to MID researchers lol. I would say they are competent as researchers though, much more than say Pravda.ru or RT, after all, to work there, you usually have to have gone to MGIMO (Moscow State Institute of International Relations) which is consistently the highest-ranked university in the country. So I would think they are pretty honest people outside of when Russian troops are 20 km from Tbilisi and Lavrov is talking about conducting peacekeeping operations against Georgian aggression on the Russian border with South Ossetia.

Kirov wrote:

From what I understand, there have been dishonest citations of Soviet archives done by Western historians, so I wouldn't put it past the Foreign Ministry to misuse it either, but this document isn't really publicized enough for people to have challenged it. The problem with having a lack of other sources is that contemporary Soviet sources were not reliable either, their primary goal being propaganda, it's not like you can just say 1943 Fascist Collaborators of Estonian SSR Strike Again. Pravda. 45(9024):2. All-Union Communist Party (bolshevik) Central Committee.

And I don't know how much information on this remains in the German and Estonian archives, as they are probably off-limits to MID researchers lol. I would say they are competent as researchers though, much more than say Pravda.ru or RT, after all, to work there, you usually have to have gone to MGIMO (Moscow State Institute of International Relations) which is consistently the highest-ranked university in the country. So I would think they are pretty honest people outside of when Russian troops are 20 km from Tbilisi and Lavrov is talking about conducting peacekeeping operations against Georgian aggression on the Russian border with South Ossetia.

Thanks for that Kirov. I didn't actually know all of that, so it was a good comment on it. I'll daresay I agree with it on the whole too.

Which comes back to this article: I'm not saying it's false, I'm saying I'm taking it with a grain of salt and, perhaps, a wedge of lemon.

This link to a text sample from World Fascism: A Historical Encyclopedia vol 1 suggests that the Russian article is correct in identifying a popular Fascist movement in Estonia in the 1930s which suggests the "resistance to Soviet totalitarianism" line frequently peddled by apologists for Nazi collaboration against the SU is a red herring, perhaps ?

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=nvD2 ... 0s&f=false