The Electoral Achievements of the Communist Party in Estonia, 1920–1940

Estonia's Communist movement has received little attention in the West. The chief exceptions are its role in an abortive putsch in 1924 and the Soviet occupation and annexation of Estonia in 1940. Existing Western sources — primarily general histories or surveys — that deal with the interwar period of 1918 to 1940 tend to dismiss the Estonian Communist Party as electorally insignificant and to view it as a mere branch of the Party in the neighboring Soviet Union. In contrast, Soviet sources see it mainly as a native movement of significant popularity, the activity of which was suppressed by a bourgeois nationalist regime. Since the Estonian Communist Party participated in all parliamentary and local elections through fronts, a more accurate interpretation of its popular appeal may be gained through an examination of national election statistics. Detailed results of parliamentary elections are available and have remained an untapped source of primary data.