1953-1991

After Stalinism ended in the 1950's, Soviet mass repressions were replaced by more selective persecution, ideological pressure and human rights violations that lasted until the collapse of the Soviet Union. More subtle measures were now used to maintain the social fear spread by public terror. During the „thaw", most prisoners were released from camps and deportees were allowed to return from Siberia, but many were banned from their profession and could not return to former homes. Prison camps remained, although sentences were somewhat reduced. Under a new policy, many dissidents were confined to mental health institutions. During the 1970s, at least 350 Estonians remained political prisoners. Many political dissidents and freedom activists received non-political sentences on fabricated grounds. 

After putting down armed guerrillas, the bulk of resistance shifted to youth groups, followed in the 1960s by small human and civic rights groups. Political repression and political trials continued, although Estonian dissidents were fairly well organized and able to maintain contacts with the outside world to convey the human rights violations in Estonia to foreign governments and organizations. Dozens of political trials were held in Estonia in the late 1970s in defiance of the Final Act of the 1975 Helsinki Conference and the 1979 UN Declaration of Human Rights, both of which had been approved by the Soviet Union. However, the resistance movement persisted and became better organized after late 1970s.

Although Stalin's death reduced brutal repressions, the Communist regime maintained absolute social control. Control measures included the daily tracking and intimidation of disloyal citizens, layoffs, banning from professional jobs or expelling from schools, chastising the parents of dissident youth, limiting the freedom of movement, violating the security of residence and confidentiality of mail, expropriating personal property, spreading libel, letters of threat, seemingly random physical attacks and so on. Colonization and russification assumed a major role in Communist repressions - bringing in masses of foreign workers, discriminating Estonians in many fields of life and promoting the Russian language. Despite the partial return of deportees and refugees, the ethnic Estonian population had by 1989 decreased by 117.000, to 963.000 (this includes 80.000 Estonians who had lived in Russia and resettled after the occupation). Meanwhile, the percentage of Estonians fell from 93% to 61, 5% as a result of colonization. By 1989, some 577.000 of Estonia's total population of 1.566.000 were Russian-speaking, most of them Soviet immigrants. According to natural growth projections, more than 170.000 Estonian children were unborn due to the occupation.

The Communist toll on Estonia was not limited to murder victims, deportees and war dead. Communist repressions inflicted physical and mental injuries to tens of thousands, suppressed living standards and devastated public morale. The political goal of Soviet repressions was to establish an atmosphere of fear and anxiety by forcibly reshaping people's attitudes and beliefs. To achieve this, Communists restricted civil liberties and banned independent civic groups. They sought to erase memories by destroying cultural heritage and millions of books. The church suffered grave repressions and all religion was oppressed. As a result, public morale was brought down and social responsibility will take decades to recover. Cultural pressure destroyed spiritual liberty. Political restriction of the arts, separation from international scenes and politization of cultural life persisted until the end of occupation.

Estonian economy and environment were heavily damaged by the Communist regime. It is impossible to precisely assess the losses from nationalization of businesses and industry, agricultural collectivization, expropriation and destruction of property. Existing assessments range from $100 billion to $180 billion. The damage is even greater in terms of economic backlog and loss of national income. In 2004, Estonia's per capita GDP was one-sixth of that of Finland, although pre-war levels had been almost comparable. Through unbalanced development, centralized management of the economy, technological backwardness, alienation from human- and home-centered values and excessive militarization, the Soviet regime caused massive and sometimes irreparable damage to Estonia's environment. Residual pollution and environmental damage caused by the Soviet army alone is estimated at $4 billion, excluding damage to public health.

50 years of Communist rule left Estonia on the verge of a demographic disaster. Estonians were becoming a minority in their homeland with their language replaced by Russian in official affairs, cultural life bound by censorship, people restrained and denied access to the outside world. Estonia's environment degraded and many cultural monuments were in shatters. Estonia was lagging hopelessly behind developed countries, including ones whose level of development it matched before WWII. The last years of Communist rule cast a majority of Estonia's population into poverty with crumbling infrastructures and economy, lack of basic consumer goods and deepening social inequality. Only the restoration of independence and swift abolition of the Communist system helped steer the country clear from social and economic collapse.

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