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Mrs Ingrid Rüütel at the 13th European Conference on Reading on 6 July 2003 in Tallinn06.07.2003
The Role of Literacy in the Development and Perspectives of Estonian Nation
1. BIRTH OF WRITTEN ESTONIAN AND RELIGEOUS LITERATURE
Estonia's written culture is relatively young. The earliest preserved written texts in Estonian are from the sixteenth century. The first printing offices were founded in 1630ies. The first grammar of the Estonian language together with German-Estonian glossary was published in 1637, the first New Testament in 1686. The latter was based on South-Estonian dialect.
The early Estonian literary language was deeply Germanised: the first texts were primarily spiritual texts translated by German clergymen into Estonian. Different systems of spelling were mixed in use. At the end of the seventeenth century a more rigid spelling was introduced.
Pietistic clergymen started to translate the Bible in the seventeenth century, it was completed and published only in 1739. This marked the birth of a written Estonian language, based on North-Estonian dialect.
K. A. Hermann published the first grammar of the Estonian language in Estonian in 1884. At the end of the 19th century Eduard Ahrens worked out a new system of spelling, which in general has been in use until today. Amendments have been made until recent times.
In the early-20th century Estonian linguists J. V. Veski, Johannes Aavik and others introduced a number of innovations in the language. The vocabulary was elaborated considerably. Nowadays, the Estonian language is a modern language, fully functioning as an official language of the state as well as a language of science, higher education and high culture.
Kristjan Jaak Peterson, an Estonian poet from the beginning of the nineteenth century was the first to prove the vitality of the Estonian language and forecast great future to it in his romantic high-flown poems. Now we celebrate on his birthday, on 14 March, the Day of the Estonian Language.
2. SPREAD OF EDUCATION IN THE ESTONIAN LANGUAGE
First schools were established in Estonia in the 13th century, after the conquest of Estonia by German and Danish feudal lords during the crusades. These were founded in towns at churches and cloisters. The aim was to educate the clergy. Dominican Monastery and school were founded in Tartu. There were a few Estonians among monks as well.
Education remained far from most of the indigenous population. The Estonians preserved their traditional culture, which differed substantially from that of the alien invaders. As an archaic cultural core, the native oral culture survived parallel to new layers of culture (and partly mixing with them) until the beginning of the twentieth century. In a few peripheral areas its components have survived until today.
In the seventeenth century Estonia was subordinated under the Kingdom of Sweden, which also meant the presence of the Lutheran church in Estonia. The Reformation established systemic education for the indigenous people.
In 1684, near the town of Tartu the first school to prepare teachers for parishes the Forselius Seminar was founded. During four years of existence 160 Estonian boys finished the school. Also tutoring at home spread, leading to better reading skills among the Estonians.
Academic Gymnasiums was opened in Tartu in 1630 and in Tallinn in 1631. In 1632, the University of Tartu (Academia Gustaviana) was founded. Still, the secondary and higher education were not accessible for Estonians.
In the 18th century, as the result of the Great Northern War, Estonia fell under the Russian Empire. The war, followed by plague, reduced the population almost to extinction, inhibiting also spread of education.
However, in the first half of the eighteenth century the Herrnhut Brethren Movement spread in Estonia. Pietism stressed the importance of personal religious experience and therefore the existence of Estonian spiritual literature became significant. Sacred songs and music was performed at services. The Herrnhuts started to correspond in Estonian, also manuscript autobiographies in Estonian spread. Beginning from the 1760ies we can talk about widespread adult self-directed learning and teaching of children at home.
Also the so-called enlightened absolutism, which spread during Catherine the II, had a positive impact on Estonians' education, as the network of elementary schools expanded.
At the end of the eighteenth century also girls started to attend school. Ever since primarily women have been teaching children to read at home.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century a few parish schools and teachers' seminars were established for Estonians to prepare teachers for elementary schools.
In the middle and second half of the 19th century major changes took place in the society and culture of Estonia. Anti-feudal liberation movement expanded and national awakening emerged. Estonian rural population started to perceive itself as one nation and to claim both social and national rights.
Estonian national development required more sophisticated culture in the mother tongue and senior level education to facilitate culture. In the middle of the nineteenth century there were still sharp class differences in the secondary education.
In 1857, pupils of peasant origin made up only 2 per cent of all the pupils in secondary schools, although they comprised the overwhelming majority of the Estonian society.
One of the peaks in the national awakening movement was just the struggle for a secondary school with the instruction in Estonian. Due to the opposition of landlords and clergy this aim was not realised.
At the end of the nineteenth century, despite all obstacles, popular education had become so broad-based that national awakening was possible and could support independence aspirations.
Compared to the vast Russian empire, which embraced Estonia, the rate of literacy was considerably higher here: according to the 1881 Census, 94 per cent of the Estonian population could read and 48 per cent both read and write. By literacy, Estonia had raised into the ranks of the most developed nations in the world.
3. EMERGENCE OF SECULAR LITERATURE AND SOCIETIES, RISE OF NATIONAL AWARENESS
Despite the derogatory attitude of most of the local Germans to the Estonians as a lower race, there were also people who had studied at West-European universities and brought ideas of humanism, romanticism and enlightenment to Estonia. Educative popular enlightenment reached its peak in the weekly Marahwa Näddala-Leht published by Otto Wilhelm Masing in 1820ies.
The magazine Beiträge zur genauern Kenntnis der estnischen Sprache founded in 1813 by Lutheran pastor Rosenplänter was the first scholarly publication about Estonia.
Scientific Estophile societies were established in the first half of the nineteenth century. The Estonian Learned Society, founded in Tartu in 1838, involved also the first Estonian intellectuals. In 1839, Schultz-Bertram suggested to compile a national epic in order to promote Estonians' national awareness. Friedrich Robert Faehlmann started to compile it and Fr. R. Kreutzwald completed the job.
The epic Kalevipoeg, based on the Estonian folklore and modelled after the Finnish epic Kalevala, had a significant impact on the rise of Estonians' self-consciousness.
Later Estonian societies were founded all over Estonia and played an important role in national movement. The Society of Estonian Literati founded in 1872 in Tartu, joined Estonian intellectuals. They developed the Estonian literary language, arranged collection of folklore and ethnographic material as well as publication of literature in Estonian.
Fund-raising to establish a secondary school with Estonian language of instruction evolved in into a mass organisation led by Executive Committee, which was involved in increasing public awareness and organising various cultural events.
Choirs and orchestras were organised in parishes. The theatre society Vanemuine, founded in 1865, established Estonian national theatre and organised the first Estonian Song Festival in 1869, with 1000 singers and musicians participating and 12 000 spectators attending. The tradition has been sustained and developed until today and it has a central role in creating, establishing and expressing Estonian national consciousness.
In 1899, a reform during the Russification period was a major setback in national development. Estonian-language schools were abolished. The Russian language was introduced in state agencies, local governments and courts. A number of societies and newspapers were closed. However, these measures could not any more inhibit national movement and the development of the national culture. National literature and music started to develop. The first Estonian poetess Lydia Koidula initiated a tradition of patriotic poetry.
Although men held the leading position in the national movement, besides Koidula, other leading women appear: popular composer and choir conductor Miina Härma, famous singer Aino Tamm; the founder and publisher of the first women's magazine Lilli Suburg; the founder of the first girls' handicraft school, an ardent fighter for women's education Natalie Johanson-Pärn, etc.
In the Estonian literature and art of the awakening period an enlightenment-based national-romantic trend, idolising ancient society was dominant. Historical stories idolised ancient freedom and created in the minds of the people an image of a seven hundred - year-long Dark Age of feudal serfdom. New words like Estonia and the Estonian people came into use (previously the Estonians called themselves the people of the country, i.e. the indigenous people).
The same ideology was expressed also in new folk songs. Cycles of political songs emerged, their handwritten copies were disseminated and read out loud but also sung at political gatherings.
Very popular was a cycle Estonian man and his kin. The Estonians were opposed to German landlords who arrived seven hundred years ago and deprived the people of their ancient freedom. This introduction is followed by a long retrospect on history, peasant uprisings and other events.
Another similar cycle ends with the Chronicler Kelch's characterisation of Estonia:
Estonia is the heaven for German landlords,
Paradise for priests,
A hidden treasure for foreigners
And hell for the peasants.
These songs have a clearly defined national and also social identity as well as a distinctive contrast with the local upper class of German origin. In the beginning people had a naļve faith in a good Russian tsar who was expected to help them.
In contrast to the written literature, the unwritten literature, i.e. folklore takes its roots back thousands of years. The poetic form common to Baltic-Finnic nations, based on alliteration, parallelism and quantitative metre derived probably from the first millennium before Christ and was developed into extremely high poetic style. This is the metre used in the Finnish epic Kalevala and Estonian epic Kalevipoeg. Johann Gottfried von Herder has also published examples of Estonian folksongs in his anthology Stimmen der Völker in Liedern (1807).
Jakob Hurt began extensive collection of Estonian folklore. In 1888 he called on the people to put down old songs, stories, proverbs, sayings, beliefs and customs of their community. According to Hurt, collection of folklore is of historical, aesthetic, and educational as well as scientific significance.
1400 people responded to his call from all over Estonia, primarily village teachers but also farm owners, pupils, students, handicraftsmen, etc. Village tailor Jaan Sandra who travelled from farm to farm in South-East Estonia sent Jakob Hurt one of the largest collections of folklore texts, a total of 8700 pages.
The collection of folklore initiated and instructed by Jakob Hurt totalled more than one hundred twenty two thousands pages. Such a voluntary collective folklore collection with the entire nation participating is unique in the world and is among the most remarkable events of the Estonian national movement.
Estonian journalism can also be considered a significant influencing factor as well as outcome of the national movement. Not only reading of newspapers but also corresponding became a public activity. This was an essential way of participation in public life. In 1893, the newspaper Olevik wrote that the Estonians are a reading nation whose favourite literature were political papers.
We can say that the second half of the nineteenth century marked the peak of the aspirations to education of the previous generations of the Estonians and the work of many a village teacher. Without this contribution the Estonians as a nation could not have been born.
The role of the village schoolteachers in the national movement was also direct: libraries, societies and dissemination of newspapers were their responsibility;
they also founded and conducted choirs nearly at all village schools, they were active correspondents at the newspapers and enthusiastic collectors of folklore.
Learning traditions, which had developed over time were significant pre-requisites for the consolidation of rural population into the Estonian nation. The voice of an illiterate nation would not have reached public media. Illiterate people could not have responded to Jakob Hurt's call to collect folklore and texts in native dialects. This initiative instilled an understanding that the Estonian language and culture generated over generations are really valuable.
Thus, the Estonian responded with actions to the idea of Jakob Hurt to become great in mind and to the call by Carl Robert Jakobson to respect himself as an Estonian and his own nation. Such a nation could already be ready for independent statehood.
Although changes in the social and economic way of life were necessary as well.
4. PEASANT REFORMS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY AND THEIR IMPACT ON NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Feudal serfdom introduced in the seventeenth century strengthened especially after Estonia's annexation to tsarist Russia. As a rule, the land belonged to German landlords but was cultivated by Estonian peasants bonded as serfs to the land. They belonged to landlords and they could be sold, exchanged and subjected to corporal punishment. Peasant unrests in the nineteenth century pushed for reforms.
The law of 1816 formally liberated peasants from serfdom. The nobility lost ownership rights to the peasant whereas the peasants lost any right to the land and the land became the sole property of the landlords. In 1868 the hated serfdom was finally banned. Large numbers of Estonian peasants started to buy farms for perpetuity.
The new Municipality Act established peasant self-government. The municipal court was freed from the rule of the landlords. The municipal council became the representative of the highest power.
General modernisation, transformation of the agrarian society towards a modern European society, industrialisation, and urbanisation, triumph of nationalism are characteristic of Estonia in the second half of the nineteenth century.
Farm owners became the main economic force and socially the most active and vital group in Estonia. The elite of the awakened peasantry called on the people to build up its own nation parallel to German and Russian communities, not as a part of them.
Educated national patriots encouraged Estonians to participate in the public life, defined legal and cultural requirements of the nation. Leaders of the movement considered the creation of European-type high culture in the Estonian language as the most important guarantee of ethnic survival and national development of the Estonians.
At the peak of the national awakening, in 1860-1880, a politically moderate wing was prevailing, focusing on the elaboration of national culture and education in the mother tongue. The founder of Estonian national ideology, a pastor and linguist Jakob Hurt assured that the Estonians as a small nation could only have a cultural and not a political mission; the national identity was important and not the statehood.
The leader of the radical wing was Carl Robert Jakobson an exemplary owner of a model farm, a writer and a journalist, the founder of the political paper Sakala. Jakobson formulated an economic-political programme of the Estonian national movement, demanding for the Estonians equal political rights with the Germans, abolition of the Baltic special status and privileges of the Baltic-German nobility.
5. ESTONIA'S DEVELOPMENT IN EARLY-TWENTIETH CENTURY AND INDEPENDENT STATEHOOD
By the beginning of the twentieth century Estonia had developed into one of the economically and culturally most advanced regions in the Russian Empire. Many Estonians acquired academic education. Professional culture and science started to develop.
Young Estonia, a group of young educated intellectuals encouraged creating European culture without the intermediation of German and Russian cultures. The mission slogan was "Let's be Estonians but let's become also Europeans".
In 1914, World War I broke out and it was followed by revolutions in Russia, which led to independence of many small European nations. Also Estonia had all necessary political, economic and cultural prerequisites for independence and on 24 February 1918, the Republic of Estonia was proclaimed.
The University of Tartu opened its doors as an Estonian university in 1919. The university comprised Faculties of Theology, Medicine, Law, Philosophy, Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Agriculture and Veterinary. The national academic staff developed. A changeover to the instruction in Estonian took place.
Other higher educational establishments Technical University, art and music high schools were established. Several educational establishments prepared teachers for secondary schools. During the twenty years the Republic of Estonia existed, Estonian national high intelligentsia was prepared and Estonian professional high culture developed.
6. DEVELOPMENT OF EDUCATION DURING SOVIET PERIOD
In 1940-1950ies, Estonia lost about a fifth of its population as fallen in the Second World War, as refugees to the West, as victims of fascist and Stalinist repressions. Those remaining in Estonia had to resort to a survival strategy and thereby they gained strength from centuries-long historic experience of life under a foreign power.
Actually, education became more accessible in the Soviet period. In 1970ies, comprehensive 11-year secondary education was introduced. Free and easily accessible education was successful. In early 1980ies, about 99 per cent of the 18-year olds had secondary education.
It was essential that in Estonia as well as in other Baltic states higher education in the mother tongue was maintained, although proportionally to increase in the Russian population, also the number of Russian study groups in the universities went up. The share of the Russian-speaking population increased up to 43-44 per cent.
Nevertheless, the Estonians were able to develop their national education, science and culture as well as ensure continuity of their intellectual elite also under the soviets. Otherwise it would have been impossible to restore independence.
The independence was gained under the leadership of national intelligentsia as the result of combined endeavours of all the social strata, without a drop of blood,
step by step through a structure of the Soviet state the Supreme Council of the Republic of Estonia. The people had elected the members of the last Supreme Council in a democratic way and its vast majority voted for splitting from the Soviet Union and restoration of independent Estonia. On November 16, 1991 the independent Estonian republic was restored.
Although this was unheard of in the Soviet Union and brought along strong resentment, it was the period of perestroika and difficult for the central authorities in Moscow to ignore this decision. Up to that time any grassroots-level unrest had been violently oppressed.
7. RESTORATION OF INDEPENDENCE AND NEW TRENDS IN EDUCATION
After the restoration of independence Estonia has continued to keep up democratic and humanistic traditions together with preservation and modernisation of the nation and national culture. However, open society, tightening economic competition and numerous other trends in the modern world pose new challenges to the education.
The most significant goal for Estonia is to become a sustainable learning society. Key words of the national education strategy are access to education, coherence, openness, flexibility, renewal capability and international cooperation.
The formation of the information society has brought along new problems. Controversy between globalisation and identity has become crucial. The problem is, how the information society will influence national developments, especially in small states.
General literacy and relatively high cultural level allowed the Estonians to become a nation and maintain their national culture and identity even under occupations. This was also a prerequisite for a rapid information technology development. We are among the most active users of computers and the Internet in the world.
Developing of a digital information distribution environment in the mother tongue will be an essential safeguard to preserve national languages and cultures. The environment involves computer software in the mother tongue as well as recording and transmission of national culture by digital storage media. We have done quite well in this field but there is still a lot to do.
The future lies with multimedia and virtual information dissemination, which does not decrease but rather increases the significance of literacy.
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