The Hoover Archives has received a significant increment to its Estonian Subject Collection, including dozens of imprints and materials documenting life in Estonia in the twentieth century, beginning with the final years of the Russian empire, through the two decades of independence, World War II, nearly half-century of Soviet occupation, and the struggle for independence in the 1980s. Various personal documents, official issuances, election materials, photographs, leaflets, all help illustrate the changing political, social, and cultural environment of at least three generations of Estonians.
The Hoover Institution has always had a strong interest in Estonia and the other Baltic countries. Estonian archival collections, acquired largely from émigré sources in the years immediately following World War II, have in recent years been richly complemented with the acquisition of more than half a million pages of digitized documents from the former KGB archives in Tallinn, the result of a cooperative project with the National Archives of Estonia completed last year (Eesti NSV Riikliku Julgeoleku Komitee Records). In the fall of 2014, Hoover Library & Archives hosted an international conference, “War, Revolution and Freedom: The Baltic Countries in the 20th Century,” that included presentations from Estonian scholars. Estonia and the Estonians, by Toivo Raun of Indiana University and published by the Hoover Institution Press, remains one of the most popular histories of that country.
Maciej Siekierski siekierski@stanford.edu
