Estonia
| Author | Joseph Serio |
| Pages | 372-379 |
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Official country name: Republic of Estonia
Capital: Tallinn
Geographic description: Borders the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Finland; it covers a total land area of 17,461 square miles, which includes 1,520 islands in the Baltic Sea
Population: 1,332,893 (est. 2005)
In the First Estonian Temporary Government established on February 24, 1918, the prime minister fulfilled the tasks of the minister of internal affairs. German occupation hampered the actual establishment of the state apparatus, and the first minister of internal affairs was in a prison camp until Germany surrendered on November 11, 1918.
The Second Temporary Government, in which the prime minister and the minister of internal affairs positions were filled by the same person, was formed on November 12 after the collapse of German rule. The first written acts of the Ministry of Internal Affairs were dated from November 13, 1918, and contained orders from the Bolsheviks for mayors and the chairmen of county councils to establish local governments and militia units.
The Third Temporary Government was formed on November 27, 1918, and by December 2 the initial structure of the Ministry of Internal Affairs was completed. The ministry consisted of the Minister's Office and the Administrative, Local Government, Technical, Health, Police, Religion and Statistics Departments, which later were called Major Directorates. In addition, the ministry involved temporary government commissars, the Horses Mobilization Commission, Requisition and War Damage Assessment Commission, Commission on Fighting against Speculation and Usury, Insurance Committee, Immobile Commission, and Commission on Combating Illegal Alcohol. The need for these commissions came from the wartime situation; they were later dismantled.
The touchstone of the ministry's work was the Communist uprising on December 1, 1924, which was successfully suppressed by the national defense apparatus. Order was soon restored, and the Defense League was created under the guidance of the minister of internal affairs. In connection with the state of emergency the minister of internal affairs assumed the responsibilities of the governor general on January 7, 1925.
In the face of the difficult economic situation of the late 1920s and early 1930s, the Ministry of Internal
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Affairs merged with the Court Ministry on July 1, 1929, and a joint Minister's Office was set up. On April 1, 1934, the ministries were separated again. On the one hand, the economic crisis was coming to an end and, on the other hand, the Ministry of Internal Affairs became much more important in an environment in which state intervention in all areas of life significantly increased.
During this time the Ministry of Internal Affairs consisted of the Administrative Department, the Police Directorate, and the Border Directorate. On November 23, 1934, the Administrative Department was divided in two: the General Department and the Local Government Department; because of this, the state's role in controlling local government significantly increased.
External police subordinate to local government was established during the war for independence, but from December 2, 1918, the Police Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs coordinated the work of the police. On December 17, 1919, the communal police was abolished and the national police, subordinate to the Police Directorate, was set up. The independent criminal police, subordinate to the Ministry of Courts, was established on January 5, 1920.
The training of professional staff was extremely important at this time as few officers came over from the Russian police. A two-grade Police School was opened in 1925: the higher-grade educated constables and the lower-grade trained common policemen. The image of the profession can be characterized by the fact that there were 350 to 400 applicants for 40 places in both courses in the late 1930s. The school trained 500 constables and 530 policemen in 15 years.
The police structure was put to the test by the Communist revolt on December 1, 1924, and by the extremist right-wing independence war movement in the early 1930s. In connection with the growth of the military threat in the world in the late 1930s, the need for a national civil defense system was high on the agenda. The high commander of the military forces and the minister of internal affairs agreed that this task should be given to the police, which set up the office of a civil air defense inspector on November 10, 1934. The Inspectorate was responsible for fire safety arrangements throughout Estonia as the inspector headed the Fire Corps.
On May 30, 1922, the legislature made the Border Service subordinate to the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The government's regulation of November 20, 1922, established a Border Directorate that was later renamed a service. Administratively, the Border Guards were subordinated to the minister of internal affairs, who gave them their assignments, but the staff consisted only of professional military men.
The Border Service was taking in noncommissioned officers and officers from the military and had to provide special training for them. Nearly 50 cordon leaders, 600 guards, and more than 70 dog guides were trained before the war. The men's ammunition and equipment significantly improved, particularly the vehicles. This enabled the number of border guards to be reduced from 2,000 men to approximately 1,000.
The Ministry of Internal Affair's hold was strong over Estonia during the war for independence. The first Estonian constitution established a regime where the state interfered little with the activities of cities, counties, and rural municipalities. The second and third constitutions notably changed the situation, resulting in the setting up of a special department at the ministry. In 1934–1937 local governments had only nominal freedom; the ministry appointed officials and directly controlled their work.
The Estonian police disappeared in the summer of 1940, when Estonia formally lost its independence to the Soviet Union. After the war the Estonian Communist Party (ECP) became the preeminent organization in the republic. Most of these new members were Russified Estonians who had spent most of their lives in the Soviet Union. Not surprisingly, Estonians were reluctant to join the ECP and thus take part in the Sovietization of their own country.
As part of the Sovietization process, regular policing duties fell largely to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which was the successor to the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs. After Joseph Stalin's death in 1953, the Soviet Union underwent a period of relative stability politically and, in the ensuing decades, attempts at limited reform of the Ministry of Internal Affairs were undertaken. Not until the 1980s and particularly with the advent of glasnost did meaningful reform become possible.
In February 1990 Estonia's Supreme Soviet eliminated paragraph 6 of the republic's constitution, which had guaranteed the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's (CPSU) leading role in society. The final blow came at the ECP's Twentieth Congress in March 1990, when it voted to break with the CPSU. The party splintered into three branches, then consolidated into a pro-CPSU (Moscow) faction and an independent Estonian Communist Party.
The Police Act, passed on September 20, 1990, created a transition period during which the dissolution of the Soviet militia and the formation of the Estonian police was to be completed. The Estonian police was
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reestablished within the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in March 1991. That was almost half a year before Estonia regained its independence. The act remained in force until May 1998, when a new Police Service Act was passed, specifying personnel recruitment, working conditions, benefits, ranks, and regulations concerned with leaving the police force.
The Ministry of Internal Affairs of Estonia is headquartered in Tallinn and is headed up by the minister, who is...
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