Cultural Route of the Council of Europe.Anchor Points: Selection Criteria and Procedure.Industrial History of European Countries.It possessed a Division 1, responsible for intelligence, whose activities. The Estonian KGB was organized in the same way as its Soviet counterpart.
Grave crimes, such as political offenses, large-scale economic crimes involving foreign currency, "banditism" (which in Estonia meant armed resistance to the occupation rule), terrorism, sabotage, and mass riots, however, were under the jurisdiction of the KGB. Soviet police, or militsiya, were the principal organ of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and were charged with securing public peace, handling criminal and economic offenses, supervising the technical condition of transport vehicles, and performing other functions. The basic force behind Soviet security structures was the KGB within the Estonian SSR Council of Ministers. Soviet rule also brought with it a vast secret police system that pervaded every element of Estonian society. The heads of all pivotal institutes were appointed by, and answered to, the Party committees. The Prokuratura (prosecutor's office) also had supervisory power. All laws were prepared and previously agreed on in corresponding Party committees and then unanimously adopted in the soviets of the republics.Ĭontrol over the economic and financial activities of all Estonian enterprises, institutions, and organizations was governed by the State Control Committee, the Council of Ministers, and the Audit Agency of the Ministry of Finance. Soviet laws trumped republican legislation, and the soviets of the individual republics lacked the power to adopt laws contrary to Soviet law. Legislative power, for its part, was vested in the USSR Supreme Soviet and in the constituent soviets of the republics. The penitentiary system was paramilitary in nature, centralized, and subordinated to the Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs. In reality, however, the only right vested in the republics of the Soviet Union was that of implementing the directives of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, with very little attention paid to local conditions.Īlthough formally independent, in practice, courts were also beholden to the Party, since the judges, as Communist Party members, had to obey their corresponding committees. Similarly, the executive was organized in the form of executive committees ("workers councils") of administrative units. Nominal "people's power" was subordinated to Soviet policymaking bodies or Party committees.
Upon seizing power, the USSR imposed a strict, centrally planned one-party rule. Soviet regime as the enforcer of law and order in the Baltic state. Concurrently, an Estonian territorial NKVD (Soviet secret police) was established by the Unlike the majority of other countries subjected to communism and totalitarianism, the forces that enveloped Estonia following World War II were not national in origin but, rather, occupying regimes forced upon Estonia under agreements signed by the Great Powers.Īfter Estonia's annexation by the USSR in 1940, the Soviet Union immediately demolished all of Estonia's legal systems and security structures. The path toward glasnost and perestroika introduced by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985, following years of stagnation under the successive administrations of Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov, and Konstantin Chernenko, spawned the beginning of Soviet collapse and spelled the end of the occupation of Estonia.